Op/Ed

“Foster care kids are our kids. They are our kids,”
said Boca Raton Democratic Sen. Kevin Rader in support
of legislation making it easier for youth in state
custody to obtain a driver’s license.

You hear that line a lot – a lot – from “leadership”
at the Department of Children & Families (DCF), and from
the flacks who wear the skirts behind which “leadership”
hides. It means nothing. It means 'less' than nothing.

Latest case in point: Lauryn Martin-Everett. The
16-year-old spent half her life as one of “our kids”
before hanging herself by the neck until dead in a
“children’s shelter” which gets money from the
“community-based care” which gets money from the DCF
which gets money from the state legislature to “parent” tens
of thousands of infants, toddlers and teens in
“out-of-home care.”

Lauryn had looks, style, and a high wattage smile.
She got good grades, ran track, and went out for
cheerleading. We know all that because the Miami Herald
tracked down Lauryn’s 29-year-old sister, Whitley
Rodriguez. It was Whitley who paid for her little
sister’s athletic gear and school clothes, and otherwise
kept track of Lauryn, both dreaming of the day that they
could do what sisters do without having to beg for
permission from publicly funded parents like the Florida
Keys Children’s Shelter.

Only God and DCF would know why Whitley was not among
the state’s candidates to provide Lauryn a “forever”
home. Whitley speculates that she could not have passed
the “home study” because she didn’t have a driver’s
license.

DCF’s “leadership” is not talking, but thanks to what
little is left of Florida’s public records law, we know
that the state adopted Lauryn out to some “forever
family” that later returned her in a fit of buyer’s
remorse.

This happens more than you might think. Florida
spends millions to get foster children off the state’s
books by marketing them with the same techniques used to
market politicians and consumer products. Those mass
adoptions create regular opportunities to obtain
“positive stories” from the organizations DCF loves to
refer to as “our media partners,” but not everyone lives
happily ever after.

Florida has never paid more than lip service to the
idea of recruiting and retaining the kind of highly
competent, highly qualified social workers who would
not, on their worst day, be fooled or bullied into
letting infamous child abusers like Jorge
and Carmen Barahona adopt a goldfish, let alone
four of “our kids.”

Ours is a system where everybody is responsible,
which is just another way of saying that nobody’s
responsible. It is a Tower of Babel, and Florida is
decades past due to rethink it from the ground up.